Paige Pearce Shares Insights on “Mental Training for Bowhunters” on The Bowhunter Podcast

May 13, 2026

DENVER (May 13, 2026) /OUTDOOR SPORTSWIRE/ – The Bowhunter Podcast, in partnership with Poncho Outdoors, recently sat down for an info-packed conversation with Paige Pearce, Bowtech pro shooter, world champion archer and passionate bowhunter. Podcast Host Christian Berg, Associate Publisher/Editor in Chief of Bowhunter Magazine, visited with Pearce to follow up on her recent feature article, “Sharpen Your Edge!” in the magazine’s May/June issue, on sale now. The article focuses on Pearce’s mental training program and how it has contributed to her archery – and bowhunting – success. Before the recording of this podcast, she had just returned from a very closely contested 2026 Archery World Cup Stage 1 event in Puebla, Mexico, and before posting of this podcast she had made history once again on her home turf, breaking a personal best and, for the 11^th time, winning the Female Pro Division of the NFAA’s Marked 3D National Championship held May 1-3 at the Western Classic Trail Shoot in Redding, California.

Pearce certainly is among the most accomplished female compound shooters of all time. She set her first state record at age 10, made the U.S. Archery Team at 13 and turned pro at 15. She has won 12 world titles and countless more tournaments across the field archery, 3D and World Archery formats. Pearce is one of the few archers who makes her entire living shooting her compound bow, and she participates in many different disciplines (both indoor and outdoor), so between various tournaments, seminars and other events, there’s not much room for bowhunting; however, as hard as she works and as much as she loves target archery, she claims to love bowhunting even more.

A California native, Paige Pearce was introduced to DIY, public-land hunting by her parents, and she thrives on the challenge of hunting with the bow and arrow because there are so many unknowns that must be overcome. “I think that’s what makes bowhunting so exciting,” she began. “I love the adrenaline. I’m a competitor by nature. I definitely thrive off of that competition type feeling, but nothing compares to the adrenaline of bowhunting. …There’s so many different factors and stuff you can’t control, and I think that’s what makes it feel so electric.”

When asked about what separates the good archers from the great, and what helped her consistently step onto the podium, she shared the following:

“At the top level, just like any other sport, everyone can shoot a bow. It’s who can do it when it matters most, in the heat of the moment, under pressure, and those are typically the people who will come out on top. Now, there’s always rarities,” Pearce continued, “but in archery, it’s not just a one-hit wonder; it’s about consistency and longevity and so, if you want to be consistently on the podium or at the top of the podium, you must have a mental game. You have to be able to handle that pressure and do it weekend after weekend, format after format. I recognized that early on,” Pearce added. “I was competitive my whole life. I played sports, I did other things, I even played the fiddle competitively. If there was a competition, I wanted to be in it. I very much learned, even through other sports, that there were people who would be so great in practice and then I’d just watch them fail and fail and fail, time and again, when it really mattered the most, when it was time to step up to the plate. So, I dove into the mental training at a very young age. I think I was 10-years-old when I first started that. I was actually at the Vegas Shoot and there was a raffle for one of Lanny Bassham’s books called With Winning In Mind. …I read that book out loud in the car on the way home, and that’s where my journey started.”

With more than two decades of experience in building up her own mental game, Pearce is now sharing what she has learned. She has developed her Insight Mental Programming educational series to help archers improve their own performance. The program includes modules to address specific challenges, such as overcoming target panic, building confidence, beating buck fever and more.

“One of the most important things,” Pearce said, “is you want to have practiced enough and shot enough arrows that every element of your actual shot itself is subconscious. No one is out there swinging a baseball bat thinking about how they’re going to lift their leg and do all this stuff – they just swing; it’s natural to them. If a police officer has to pull a gun on someone, I want an officer who has done that so many times and practiced that routine so that the gun is out of the holster and everything is good. I don’t want some person who has never done it and their gun gets stuck in the holster. The more you do something, the more smooth and repetitive that becomes, because that act is transitioning from your conscious mind running it to the subconsious mind is now running that, which is really the stronger, more fluid part of our mind. So, everything we do in archery, ideally, we will have built into the subconsious so in those moments when there isn’t time to think…the subconscious just kicks in and does it’s job. So, ideally, if bowhunters have practiced enough, at least their shot elements are built into the subconsious. That’s the first step…”

When asked about handling buck fever, Pearce admitted that she still gets nervous. “I still feel the adrenaline hunting; I always will. But, before I’d done all this mental programming, I used to feel it before the shot. I’d see the animal and the adrenaline would spike, and I’d hook my [release] up and I’d see my hand quivering, waiting to draw the bow back; but now I’ve transition to where I can hold that off, I can contain that, I can stay calm, I can stay mentally focused, I can make a good shot and, usually, it’s when my bow fires that then the adrenaline rush hits.”

“I wish that this was something that more people took seriously, and that more people did,” confided Pearce, “because they’d have so much more success. I can honestly attest over my years of bowhunting that when I started the mental training, it wasn’t because of bowhunting, I started the mental side on target, focused primarily on target, but then when I went bowhunting I saw that start to carry over and I was like, ‘Okay, I care so much about bowhunting, you put in so much time, money, effort, all the things, going out of state, getting tags, getting ready for these hunts, that I should also be putting that much mental effort into the hunting success, just like I do the tournament side.’”

“One of the things I love about the archery community,” said Host Christian Berg, “is the willingness of pro archers to share what works with fellow archers, and that extends to bowhunters like myself. Paige Pearce is an incredibly hard-working and successful archer, literally competing at the highest levels, but she loves bowhunting too, and it was wonderful to spend time with her and to learn how having a mental game can help you in the moment of truth on big game.” To learn more about developing your own mental game for archery and bowhunting, visit Paige Pearce’s Insight Mental Programming.

The episode is now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Podbean. Watch the full episode here. Additionally, pick up the latest issue of Bowhunter Magazine on newsstands or subscribe.

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